Info on the article to be visible on the right hand side

Ascelia
Hi
Sometimes the information is visible and other times not.
What is the best way when uploading document to ensure the information, eg, the author, title etc... is always visible?
Many thanks
Delphine
  • mjthoraval
    Items are best added from the web page of the articles with the Zotero Connector.
    See here for more details:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero

    The metadata of the items will appear in the Item Pane (on the right side) if the documents are under a parent item:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#standalone_attachments_and_parent_items
  • aborel
    edited 5 days ago
    Perhaps some of your documents are stored as standalone attachements, and you need to create parent items for them? https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#standalone_attachments_and_parent_items

    The last suggestion in the section given as link should probably be right-click +"Create Parent Item..." as per Zotero 8, but that's the idea.

    Let us know if this is not your actual problem, or if you need more details.
  • Ascelia
    Hi,
    As we purchase the document. I do not upload from websites.
    I can see that for some PDF that I uploaded all information has come up and I do not know how that happened. For those where i cannot see, should I then update in a parent pdf? if so how to I do that?

    as per below screenshot, it looks good, but when now I add new articles it is no longer coming with the info.

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u19205683/yccoyvxm70duiy81otaa.png
  • Ascelia
    Thank you in advance for the help.
  • aborel
    edited 5 days ago
    Right, if you add a PDF from your hard drive, Zotero will not always be able to catch enough information to automatically create a parent item and fill it with metadata.

    As described in the link I posted, you can either capture metadata from a relevant web site (if available) and drag the standalone attachment onto the newly created item (which will become the parent), or you can right-click on the standalone attachment (for example 2022-IPI-Spring-web_compressed (1).pdf in your screenshot), select "Create parent item" and fill in the fields manually.
  • mjthoraval
    @Ascelia: Note though that most of the instructions are given for the desktop app, which is the recommended way to use Zotero. The screenshot you are showing is the web library, which has less functionalities. The automatic retrieval of metadata for PDFs is not working from the web library:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/web_vs_desktop
  • aborel
    Excellent point about the desktop app vs. web! I often forget that aspect.
  • Ascelia
    ok so maybe I have used Zotero the wrong way. Could you please send me a screen shot on how the desktop looks like, sorry I am not good at this.
  • mjthoraval
    It is very similar, except the attached files are displayed in the items list in the centre, and instead of having tabs in the right side pane, you have sections:
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u265723/vjh556tv8x1pn193hf8e.png

    You can install the desktop app from https://www.zotero.org/download/
  • Ascelia
    Hi,
    Now I understand, and I am now working in Desktop, I did not realize it was the way to work.
    It is just strange though that before all information on the articles came up automatically but it no longer happens :(
    I really would like for article information to show automatically, how it worked before and not now? there must be a way, as I managed to add some articles where all information shows:(
    I am trying to understand the system and will need to write instruction as I need to share with a colleague but right now I feel I am not making progress.
    It is a great help via the Forum but I wonder if anyone would have 5 minutes of their time for a quick meeting on Teams so I can move forward and use Zotero to the full.
    thanks in advance. The help is very much appreciated.

    Delphine


    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u19205683/ebgvoytj8nn75ss2253g.png
  • mjthoraval
    edited 2 days ago
    I really would like for article information to show automatically, how it worked before and not now? there must be a way, as I managed to add some articles where all information shows:(
    The ability to extract metadata from the PDF files depends on the content of the PDF file. It will work well for most recent academic papers, but not as well for scanned documents, conference proceedings or any type of documents that do not have metadata available online.

    From the page linked above, there is a link to a page explaining in detail how the "Retrieve PDF Metadata" feature works, why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and why this should not be your main way to import metadata in your library:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata
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